Re: George Coyne and Richard Dawkins

John Harshman <john.harshman@gmail.com> writes:

On 5/22/24 1:59 AM, Richmond wrote:

*Hemidactylus* <ecphoric@allspamis.invalid> writes:
 

Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:

Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> writes:
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On Tue, 21 May 2024 14:58:19 +0100, Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:
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Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> writes:
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On Tue, 21 May 2024 10:54:16 +0100, Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:
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Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> writes:
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On Mon, 20 May 2024 17:16:16 +0100, Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:
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In this interview, at the point I link to:
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https://youtu.be/68ejfHahFK4?t=254
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Father Coyne offers Neodarwinian Evolution as an explanation
for, among other things, the origin of the universe. And
Professor Dawkins agrees with him. How does evolution of any
kind have anything to do with the origin of the universe?
surely it would need something to evolve from?

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I got the impression that he was using "evolution" in a wider
sense than just *biological* evolution, that life itself
"evolved" from chemical reactions.

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I suppose you could interpret "origin of the universe" as
"origin of the content of the universe" and then say that it
evolved from pure energy. But I am not sure if that is
evolution strictly, or just changing from one thing to
another. And I am not sure if energy is different from content,
or if universe is different from content of the universe. In
summary, I am not sure.

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When talking about a subject in what is essentially a
metaphysical way. I think we shouldn't get too hung up on the
precise meaning of specific words, it's the ideas behind the
words that matter.
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A fascinating interview that I had not seen before, thanks for
the link. Whilst I was aware of George Coyne, I never really
explored his ideas before and I was fascinated by how much
what he was saying echoed my own beliefs and ideas - there was
nothing he said that I would argue with and I thought he
handled Dawkins extremely well.

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The TV series from which it was excluded was quite
entertaining. I think in that series Dawkins was struggling to
keep the lid on his temper at times, although that could just
be his natural expression.

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I wasn't aware of that series. Any idea why this episode was
excluded?

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At the beginning of the video Dawkins explains that it was left
out as there was too much overlap with an interview with the
Archbishop of Canterbury.

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OK, I forgot that your link started ~4 mins in. I'll be interested
to hunt down the Archbishop of Canterbury episode, but I'd expect
it to have a lot of overlap with George Coyne. I think that a lot
of USians make the mistake of regarding the likes of Ken Ham as a
representative of mainstream Christianity when he isn't - at least
not outside the USA!

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Coyne sounds rather confused to me. He doesn't seem to know what
God is. He says God is not an engineer, and then he says God
created the universe, that he is a prime mover, and gave us brains,
and then he says God is superflous and doesn't explain things.
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Coyne doesn’t think we are apes, so I disagree with him there.  He

acknowledges that we evolved from apes so it is just how the
categories are defined. I think he means we are not identical to what
he thinks of as an ape.
 

But at around 56:31 when Dawkins asks him about ensoulment (a
bugbear of mine) Coyne says he doesn’t believe in the soul. Coyne
explicitly says around 56:43 that he doesn’t “believe this idea of
at some time in the evolutionary process God put a soul…”  >> He got
himself into that pickle by saying God is not an intervening >>
engineer. The alternative is that every living thing has a soul.

>
There are other alternatives. For example, the soul could be an
emergent property of the body, particularly of the brain. If he gave
us brains (mentioned above), souls could have come along with that,
and perhaps even gradually. Maybe chimps have
near-but-not-quite-souls.

So at what point in the transition from ape to human did the soul
appear, and why? Did Neandertals have souls, or other kinds of human?
(And what's a soul anyway?).